Weekly Mix #181 - Indistractible, Risk Taking, Doing What You Love & Daft Punk

Weekly Mix #181 - Indistractible, Risk Taking, Doing What You Love & Daft Punk

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Happy Monday!

My favourite short essays this week were Avoiding Problems, Recovery, and Comparison Traps.

I took a couple days off this week, and it's been great catching up on some reading and clearing out some projects and stuff that had been lingering.

I still find it a challenge to plan realistically for time off, and not trying to cram a bunch of stuff in!

In this week’s newsletter:

Podcast Notes: Nir Eyal on The Knowledge Project​

Article: 7 things boxing taught me about risk taking​

Article: The Velocity of Skill Development: Quickly Closing the Gap​

Article: on doing what you love​

Article: Promise and challenges for psilocybin and MDMA use in treatment​

Video: Sample Breakdown: Daft Punk - One More Time​

Have a wonderful week!

Graham

Podcast Notes: Nir Eyal on The Knowledge Project​

Nir Eyal is the author of Indistractible. His appearance on The Knowledge Project covered lessons on focus, avoiding distraction, and living an intentional life:

Every new technology has good things and bad aspects. The question is, how do we make use of the good?

For the vast majority of us, the things we call addictions are actually distractions.

The leading cause of distraction is not external triggers. Distraction begins with internal triggers: boredom, uncertainty, fatigue, anxiety.

The root cause of all human behaviour is the desire to escape discomfort.

The time you plan to waste is not a waste of time.

Any distraction can be turned into traction by simply making time for it in your day.

See the full list of takeaways here.​

Graham Mann

@grahamkmann

30+ lessons on focus, avoiding distraction, and living an intentional life from the conversation between @nireyal and @shaneaparrish on @TKPPodcast

(and why you shouldn't have a to-do list)

A thread 👇

February 23rd 2021

5

Retweets

27

Likes

Article: 7 things boxing taught me about risk taking - Ed Latimore​

I've been thinking a lot about risk and reward after reading How to Get Rich. This article breaks down the two types of risk, and why you need to embrace one and avoid the other.

"I believe that my ability to take risks, more than anything else, has helped me build the life I have.

The more guaranteed the outcome, the less valuable it is."

Article: The Velocity of Skill Development: Quickly Closing the Gap - Farnam Street​

Skill development is something that's always interested me about sport, but it's a meta-skill that we should all spend time improving. This article breaks down the key pieces of skill development, including different types of feedback, and how to accelerate our skill acquisition:

"Brazil is the home of many of the world’s most skilled soccer players. So you might wonder how it develops its players? Brazil uses a game called futebol de salão (From: The Little Book of Talent):

This insanely fast, tightly compressed five-on-five version of the game— played on a field the size of a basketball court— creates 600 percent more touches, demands instant pattern recognition and, in the words of Emilio Miranda, a professor of soccer at the University of São Paulo, serves as Brazil’s “laboratory of improvisation.”

Article: on doing what you love - Ava​

Ava is quickly becoming one of my favourite writers, and this piece, while a little less structured than I often prefer, muses on the question that so many of us struggle with: how do we merge what we love with what is practical?

"We want to believe that love is separate from practicality, but it isn’t. It’s difficult to do what you love. It makes your life uncertain: it often leaves you vulnerable. Most people don’t achieve the alignment necessary to full-time work on something they really enjoy."

Article: Promise and challenges for psilocybin and MDMA use in treatment - Peter Attia​

Psychedelics have held my attention for a couple years now, as a new method of treating mental illness, and possibly enhancing our own cognitive function.

Peter Attia lays out some good questions here about what a wide-scale rollout of psychedelics for treatment might look like, and the associated challenges.

Video: Sample Breakdown: Daft Punk - One More Time​

Just 50 seconds long, this video shows how Daft Punk created the signature beat from One More Time.

I love videos like this: quick, clear, and teaching by showing, rather than telling.

10 Tweets:

​A list of the best content on creating newsletters from Austin Schlessinger and I​

​A list of interesting Canadians in tech on Twitter​

​Ways to improve your storytelling from David Perell​

​Dickie Bush's workflow for keeping track of newsletters​

​10 copywriting laws from Dave Gerhardt​

Photo of the week:

We've been having a competition at work for the most kilometres walked/biked/skiied/etc., which means I've been kicking off biking season a bit early.

This was the coldest ride I've been on in a while, but the views were worth the freezing toes, fingers, and face.

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